Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's 1979 tale of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" plays out in mid-19th century London, begrimed by the foul cauldron of the Industrial Revolution. Now being revived in a rich and expressively sung production at Geva Theatre Center, "Sweeney" is a brilliant work of theater, and more a kind of Broadway opera than typical Broadway musical fare. Its virtues begin in the lyrical sentiment and edgy wit of Sondheim's songs, and the vividness of characterization in the score and in Wheeler's book.

"Sweeney Todd" tells the story of Sweeney the barber, unjustly imprisoned when the corrupt Judge Turpin had desired his wife 15 years earlier. Now he has returned to take vengeance. The play combines opera-like melodrama, the wrench of tragic irony, and, at its core, grisly comedy. Its dance of revenge is an ironic perversion of individual initiative: Sweeney finds freedom and fulfillment in the obsessive joy of bloodletting, and he comes to his own bad end through the ironic twists of actions and consequences that come to resemble a capricious destiny.

Soon after he learns that his wife died and the evil judge adopted his daughter, Sweeney takes up with a worthy consort, Mrs. Lovett, the self-described purveyor of the "worst meat pies in London." Her daemonic practicality finds the perfect and most grotesquely funny way to dispose of the bodies Sweeney's razor provides. Business is soon booming and she begins to dream of settling down to middle-class respectability. Her suggestion that she and Sweeney marry proves to be her undoing.

This is an extraordinarily hard show to do well - the score is unusually demanding and the subject is gruesome, but its performance must be both horrifying and funny. It may border on Grand Guignol, but its characters must come alive as individuals. "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd" is the play's first line, and, with few exceptions, it is impossible not to. Sondheim's often rapid-fire lyrics, set to his dissonant music, were almost always crystal clear, even in the ensemble passages.

The performance started slowly; the first few scenes felt static. Stephen Tewksbury as Sweeney sang with great theatrical tension but his acting was at first two-dimensional - a set face to suggest barely contained rage - until he warmed to the task in the irresistible first-act finale, "A Little Priest." Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett seal their bargain with the devil and each other with great panache. Similarly, Kristie Dale Sanders was much too restrained and "normal" at first; it took her a while to latch on to the clown-like anarchy that makes Mrs. Lovett both distinctive and formidable. She is an irrepressible monster. Marissa McGowan as Sweeney's innocent daughter and Daniel Bogart as the young sailor who loves her sang sweetly in their featured numbers, the exquisite "Joanna" and the lyrical "Green Finch and Linnet Bird." Only the judge and his bullying accomplice, played by James Van Treuren and Roland Rusinek respectively, lacked the spark to make their villainy sufficiently malicious.

Mark Cuddy's straightforward direction illuminated the play's gleefully and horrifically dark center. Only a second act scene in a madhouse was unconvincing, and the last 20 minutes felt terribly rushed - mainly a problem in the writing, as Wheeler tries almost frantically, and melodramatically, to wrap everything up. Fortunately, Cuddy resisted the temptation to spray the stage with blood at every opportunity; as a result, the murders focused not on mere gore, but on Sweeney's obsession. At the same time, Adam Koch's set of huge, ragged canvas draperies painted with monochrome tenement houses, and rotating unpainted modules that moved the action seamlessly, make the play's subtext of a dehumanizing industrial world an essential part of the production's effect.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Through March 29

Geva Theatre Center, 75 Woodbury Blvd.

$26-$63 | 232-GEVA, gevatheatre.org